


A Resurrection in Crimson

by spinsterclaire



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Father-Daughter Relationship, Gen, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-20
Updated: 2013-12-20
Packaged: 2018-01-05 06:54:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1090923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spinsterclaire/pseuds/spinsterclaire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tywin quietly grieves over Joanna's death. When young!Cersei visits him in his solar, he realizes that not all is lost.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Resurrection in Crimson

The day Joanna died, he threw her dresses into the fire – green, azure, lilac all consumed by red, red and more red. He liked the sound of the crackling flames, the way they roared as they scorched his wife’s second skins. The smell was rich and heady in the air, the crisp fiery tongues licking the garments until they were dust, and it drew the pitter-patter of feet to his chamber.

“Father…what are you doing?” It was Cersei, blonde hair and emerald eyes gleaming in the glow of the hearth, and he turned to look at her. She, too, seemed like she was alight within the arms of the burning fire, and he thought this befitting, for Cersei may as well have been another of Joanna Lannister’s skins. The girl looked like her, sounded like her, and it was only when she grew angry that Tywin could discern the differences between the two. (His wife had never been filled with so much spite, so much hatred and ambition. These qualities came from him and only him.) Still, though, it was easy to forget that they were not one in the same.

“Are those mother’s clothes?” Her bottom lip trembled but the rest of her face remained as composed as stone. She was only nine, but Tywin fancied that she was born a woman grown, with adult thoughts and adult desires. She had never been innocent, never would be.

“Indeed,” he replied, turning back to the blaze and watching the folds of fabric turn to ash. In the mere minutes he’d spent observing them burn, they had already transformed to a mound of cinders. Scary how all life – whether it be a human’s or a piece of clothing – was so fragile, so easy to grasp, throw away, and reduce to a pile of black dirt.

“Why? I loved mother’s clothes.” Cersei took a step forward, and when Tywin snapped his head in her direction, she did not flinch like his son would have. (Sometimes he mused that she was his true son, harder and more ruthless than Jaime or Tyrion could ever be.) For a minute, with Cersei standing before him so fiercely, Tywin could only see the dead woman whose body he’d held just hours before. He had not cried, would never cry, because the coldness of her hands and cheeks and lips had frozen his heart into a block of white ice. 

Tywin ran his fingers over the smooth silk that still sat in his lap, just out of his daughter’s sight – the only piece of Joanna’s wardrobe that he had not been able to part with. It was the dress she’d worn when he asked for her hand in marriage.

 The gown was warm from the fire, and he wondered what it’d be like to be engulfed in a deadly heat, to feel your skin bubble and your sweat drip down your face like a holy baptism. He had felt that way once – long, long ago on an autumn evening – when he’d met Joanna for the first time. The pain had been exquisite, the way he’d fallen so hard and so fast and how she had fucked him two weeks later with just as much fervor and passion. He could remember unlacing her dress, the one now draped across his thighs, and how it had moved so fluidly beneath his hands, like it and she belonged to him. The garment had fallen to the ground like water, her heat melting it, until it was puddled about her feet. He took her there, in the dark hallway where they were not meant to be. She had swallowed him whole with her warmth. ( _I suppose I am lucky to have run into the likes of you…)_

“I always wanted to wear them,” Cersei continued with a hint of sadness. Her eyes flitted to the burnt clothing before them.

 Tywin stood then, the dress cradled in his arms, and he noticed the joy that played across his daughter’s face when she recognized the crimson gown. He dropped before her, onto his knees, and slipped it over her head in one swift motion. It was too long for her, swamped her completely in a cloak of ruby – a cloak of fire – and it would not fit her properly for years to come. But one day, one day…

“One day you will, my sweet,” he said.

“I wish she could see me in it. I wish she weren’t dead.”

Tywin looked his daughter in the eyes and, in that moment, he _knew_. He knew then that he was not alone, that the heat was not gone from the world as long as Cersei remained there, with the orange-glow flickering across her face and her body clad in her dead mother’s clothes. Within Cersei’s gemstone eyes and silky golden hair, ghosts could come alive again.

“No,” he whispered, seeing only the woman he met on that autumn evening long, long ago, “She is not dead.” 

He kissed Cersei on the forehead and told the guards to escort her to her room.


End file.
